So You Want to Get Your Self-Published or Indie Book into the Library? Read on!

It’s not easy but it sure is more and more possible. Just like how alternative music and indie rock in the 90s eventually went mainstream, so too alternative and indie book publishing is going mainstream today. With outfits such as Friesen Press, Kindle Direct, and Lulu, authors can easily bypass the closed gates of traditional publishers. Nothing against traditional publishers, but sometimes, when you have to get a book out, and you can’t get into their old boys’ club, you have to figure out alternative solutions.

While indie presses can get your book into the market, you still have to sell the book. In this blog, I’ll be talking about one particular type of customer: the library. In Canada, there’s over 3000 libraries. And in the USA, that number goes up to 120,000. That’s a lot of potential customers! Since my non-fiction book on theatre and creative writing came out six months ago, I’ve been learning a lot about marketing. Marketing is a full-time job. In these six months, I’ve sold 600 books. While it doesn’t seem like a big number, other writers have been telling me that’s pretty good. In the last month, I’ve begun focusing on libraries.

From a marketing perspective, libraries are a little trickier for self-published authors. While there’s a ton of resources to help indie authors promote their books, there isn’t so much out there to help them approach libraries. In this last month, I’ve found that it is indeed possible to get your book into libraries. I’ve just started the library drive and eleven have jumped on board: Pasadena Public Library, Fargo Public Library, South Texas College Library, Brown University Library, University of Bristol Library, Greater Victoria Public Library, University of Victoria Library, Russian State Library, Richmond Public Library, Smithers Public Library, and the Alberta Playwrights Network Reading Room. Here’s what I’ve learned.

Several Months Before the Publication Date

Start thinking about getting reviews from the trade publications librarians read: Library Journal, Kirkus, Midwest Book Review, and Publisher’s Weekly (or their indie counterpart Booklife) are good starting points. Keep in mind, some publications, such as Library Journal, only accept titles for review three months or more before the publication date. I lost a good chance here, as they rejected my application, since I approached them a few months after the publication date. Dang!

Several Months after Publication

Set up an Amazon author’s page. Set up a Goodreads account. Try doing a Goodreads Giveaway. A Giveaway is where you pay Goodreads $119 for the privilege to give away x number of books. Goodreads members interested in reviewing your book enter a lottery to receive a review copy. You are responsible for sending the winners a copy of the book. Then you wait for them to give you a review. About 25% of my Giveaway recipients ended up reviewing the book. Mind you, some reviews may still be coming. It takes some patience. To get in the library, you need to generate some publicity. Reviews help that process.

Speaking of reviews, also set up a NetGalley account. Whereas bibliophiles (and some librarians) go on the Goodreads site, NetGalley is populated by folks on the professional side: librarians, booksellers, educators, and book reviewers. If you’ve got one or two titles, you’ll save a few bucks joining a NetGalley Coop instead of signing directly with NetGalley. Once you have Amazon, Goodreads, and NetGalley set up, reviews should start coming in. Be patient. And remember: there’s no such thing as bad publicity. If every review is five stars, customers aren’t going to believe them. The occasional one- or two-star review keeps it honest.

As many libraries rebrand themselves as community centres, you see more and more of them offering a selection of books by local authors. My local library, the Greater Victoria Public Library has an emerging authors program. Check your local library and see what they can do. Many of them are keen on supporting local talent. I’ve been doing Facebook polls, and many writers have been able to get their book into their local library simply by walking in and talking to the librarian.

If you have a fiction or young adult title, the SELF-e program might be a good fit (at time of writing, they accept but have not begun reviewing non-fiction, children’s, and poetry titles). How it works is that you supply them with a PDF or ePUB copy of your book, and they make it available for electronic lending at their partner libraries. Statistics show that 50% of people who borrow your book will go on to purchase it. Somehow, I question this number, but hey, they must have crunched the actual numbers…

Half a Year to Three Years after Publication

Libraries are interested in purchasing newer books. Unless you book becomes a classic, you’ve got three years to get into the library. So, what do you do after the initial burst of activity? Here’s what I’ve been doing as I enter a sort of no-man’s land six months after initial publication.

I created a Facebook business page for my book. And on that page, I made a post asking readers to ask their local library to purchase the book. Then I used the paid Facebook ‘Boost’ feature to advertise the post to people with links to theatre, libraries, playwriting, and creative writing. Here’s how the post reads:

***RISK THEATRE LIBRARY DRIVE*** If risk theatre ever inspired you to rethink tragedy, then write your local library. Ask them to carry the book. Ideas have a half-life, and after that time, they are done. Now, while risk theatre is full of that incipient energy, is the time to make inroads. And, as a grassroots art movement, risk theatre depends so much on your support. The book has a good start. In its first five months, it has sold over six hundred copies. Nine libraries stock it: Greater Victoria Public Library, University of Victoria Library, Smithers Public Library, Richmond Public Library, Russian State Library (the 2nd largest library in the world, thank you Natalia), Pasadena Public Library, Fargo Public Library, South Texas College Library, and the Alberta Playwrights Network Reading Room. Nine is not enough. Can we not have fifty by year end? Here’s the vital details:

TITLE: THE RISK THEATRE MODEL OF TRAGEDY
AUTHOR: EDWIN WONG
PUBLISHER: FRIESEN PRESS 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5255-3756-1
AVAILABILITY: Amazon, B&N, Chapters Indigo, and wherever books are sold

All it takes is a minute to get this idea out to waiting readers!
https://yourlibrary.bibliocommons.com/item/show/1329131101

I’ve been also emailing the acquisitions or collections staff at libraries to ask them to consider my title. I send them a blurb with the purchasing details and also a PDF of the front and back jacket (so that they can see right away that the book has been professionally designed). I’ve started keeping track of libraries on a spreadsheet. I’ve hit up all public and academic libraries in BC, Canada (there’s a hundred or so). And now I’m concentrating on New York State because it’s a playwriting powerhouse. This process is extremely laborious. But since when has anything worthwhile been without labour? Here’s what my blurb to the libraries looks like. I’ve tried to emphasize in the letter the advantages to the library of carrying the title:

Hello,

Here’s an amazing book on theatre and creative writing that library readers absolutely love. Would you consider adding it to your collection?—details below. We began the library drive a month ago, and the book can be already found at: Brown University Library, Pasadena Public Library, Fargo Public Library, South Texas College Library, University of Bristol Library, the University of Victoria Library, Greater Victoria Public Library, Richmond Public Library, Smithers Public Library, and the Russian State Library. Join the growing list of libraries which stock this exciting title!

All best,

Edwin

The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy:

Gambling, Drama, and the Unexpected

By Edwin Wong

AUTHOR & THEATRE EXPERT SEEKING TO REKINDLE THE ART OF

THE DRAMATIC TRAGEDY

★Winner in the 13th Annual National Indie Excellence Awards★

★Winner in the 2019 Colorado Independent Publishers Association CIPA EVVY Awards★

The author’s diagnosis and remedy for the current state of theater are imaginative and quite persuasive . . . An ambitious, thought-provoking critique of tragedy in the 21st century.

—Kirkus Reviews

If you love literature—theater, film, novels, history, biography, opera, whatever—you need to read this extraordinary work . . . Read it—twice. You will never read another work of literature the same way.

—Charlie Euchner, Columbia University

An insightful and compelling read . . . Through the art of reinterpretation, Wong manages to present a bold, inventive new model of theatre through the lens of risk.

—Broadway World

The idea of ‘tragedy’ was wrapped in the mystique of motivations and nobility and flaws that put it out of reach for me as a playwright. This book strips away the mystique and makes the form available to me.

—Donald Connolly, playwright and two-time Academy Award nominee

On Netflix, it seems the vast majority of shows are centred around doom, death, and destruction—and viewers can’t get enough. But if you take a trip to Broadway, all you see are upbeat musicals and comedies. There is a vast difference between the content consumed on television and live on stage—but why?

Theatre expert Edwin Wong thinks the time has come to reboot the ancient art of the tragedy. To do so, Wong who has a master’s degree in the classics with a concentration in ancient theatre, has developed a new and unique model of drama called ‘risk theatre’ to align tragedy with modern concepts of chance and uncertainty. The result is a tragic stage where every dramatic scene is a gambling act, and risk runs riot. His vision of the stage is outlined in his new book, The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy: Gambling, Drama, and the Unexpected[Friesen Press, 2019].

The risk theatre model is a blueprint of 21st century drama. By drawing examples from Sophocles to Shakespeare and O’Neill, Wong argues in a clear and straightforward voice how tragedy dramatizes gambling acts gone awry. By dramatizing risk, tragedy speaks powerfully and directly to people living in an increasingly volatile world. Audiences leave with a heightened sense of how low-probability, high-consequence events defy our best-laid plans to reshape the world.

‘Today tragedy is a tired art. It fails to capture the attention and publicity that it once did in the past’, says Wong. ‘The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy aims to restore this revered art to its rightful throne by illustrating and then inviting dramatists to create suspenseful, captivating risk theatre plays’.

To further this exploration into the art form of the modern tragedy, Wong teamed up with Langham Court Theatre, one of the oldest and most respected theatres in Canada, to create the Risk Theatre Modern Tragedy Competition, the world’s largest playwriting competition for the writing of tragedy. In its inaugural run, 182 playwrights from 11 countries participated. The competition is now in its second year and has been covered by Broadway World, BC Bookworld, The Dramatist (the official publication of the Dramatists Guild of America), and The New York Review of Books.

‘By reimagining tragedy as a theatre of risk, my book aligns the art form with the modern fascination with chance and uncertainty and restores tragedy to its rightful place as the greatest show on earth’, adds Wong.

EDWIN WONG is an award-winning classicist with a master’s degree from Brown University, where he concentrated in ancient theatre. His other research interests include epic poetry, where he has published a solution to the contradiction between fate and free will in Homer’s Iliad by drawing attention to the peculiar mechanics of chess endgames. Wong founded the Risk Theatre Modern Tragedy Playwright Competition with Langham Court Theatre to align tragedy with the modern fascination with uncertainty and chance. It is the world’s largest competition for the writing of tragedy (visit risktheatre.com for details). Wong lives in Victoria, Canada.

ISBN: 978-1-5255-3756-1

Title: The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy: Gambling, Drama, and the Unexpected

Author: Edwin Wong

List Price: $14.99 (USD)

Language: English

Formats: Paperback, hardcover, eBook

Pub Date: February 2019

Publisher: Friesen Press

What else can you do to get into libraries? Well, in Canada, there’s a non-profit owned by the libraries called the Library Services Centre or LSC. They provide cataloguing and acquisitions help to their members. In addition, LSC has a small press and author program. This service is completely free: you send them marketing info for your self-published or indie title, and they advertise the book to their member libraries. If libraries decide to order, LSC will send the author a PO and the author ships the books out to LCS. To provide this service, LCS expects a discount from list price, which, in my opinion, is more than fair. It took me half an hour to set up with LCS, and they listed my book within an hour. Very impressive! I’m currently trying to find LSC equivalents in the USA and UK. Please let me know if you know of one.

Three Years and Beyond

This requires some thinking outside the box. A writer on a Facebook authors page had a fascinating suggestion: use a service such as Findaway to convert your written book into an audiobook. The awesome thing about Findaway’s service is that they take care of getting your audiobook into libraries. Wow! The cost? On Findaway’s site, a 80,000-word book sets you back $2000-$2500 dollars (USD, 2019 estimate). That’s a little bit more than what Friesen Press charged me to distribute, layout, design, and typeset my written book. The difference in distribution between Friesen and Findaway, however, is that Findaway gets the audiobook into libraries, which is a big plus. I am stoked to consider this option in the future. It would actually be quite exciting to hear what the book sounds like.

Well, assiduous readers, there you have it: some ways of getting your book into libraries worldwide! I’ll see you in the library!

Until next time, I’m Edwin Wong, and I’m doing Melpomene’s work.